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What’s (About to Be) Hot in the Shop: Free Hockey Card Packs

For the seventh season, Upper Deck is bringing back National Hockey Card Day and collectors are already stoked to visit card stores this weekend in the United States. Last weekend, our Canadian brothers were dishing out the free packs and from what I heard, we will have to step up our game to keep pace.

My shop happens to embrace promotions like few others do and we have been proud to be part of this promotion since it was made available. There is something truly awesome about being able to dish out free cards to new and existing collectors, and we have planned ahead by ordering hundreds of 2015 packs.

I checked in with Wayne Wagner, owner of Wayne’s Sports Cards in Edmonton who shared his thoughts about how successful National Hockey Card Day was in his store,north of the border last weekend.

“National Hockey Card Day is by far the best promotion we have in the industry,” he told me. “With the combination of Hockey Day in Canada and NHCD being on the same day it makes it very easy to promote, and very easy for consumers to remember. This year being on Valentine’s Day, it gave us that extra opportunity to have more girlfriends, wives or that female collector participate by doing a Valentine’s Day promotion as well. Even with the slower season due to the Double Rookie Crop last year and no Rookie this year as stand out, the day was once again a huge success. Thank you NHL, NHLPA, and Upper Deck.”

Wayne’s Memorable Moments card could be in your collecting world if you visit your participating US local card shop this weekend.

At my store, we will be hosting an ice cream social (I might have to change that to a hot chocolate social since we are expecting up to a foot of snow this Saturday), a spelling contest featuring some of the more interesting names that the NHL can offer, some surprise rewards to collectors who wear hockey gear and we will be finishing things off with a case break of 14/15 Upper Deck SPX Saturday night at our Trade Night.

This year’s checklist for the US set includes superstars like Patrick Kane, Jeremy Roenick, Phil Kessel, Chris Chelios, Brian Leetch, John LeClair, some guy named Wayne Gretzky and many more.

There are randomly inserted autographed cards as well. I checked eBay and they must be really randomly inserted since I was only able to find one card listed from this past weekend’s NHCD in Canada. Then again, those crazy Canadians might be so in love with their cards that they wanted to keep them all for themselves. They are ardent collectors.

Like I said, we take our promotions rather seriously. Check out some of the wax we loaded up on for our ravenous puckheads this coming Saturday.

Yes, we will have much more available before things start up this Saturday at 10 a.m.

While it wasn’t winning the Stanley Cup, my store was one of 20 lucky shops to receive $500 in bonus prize support from Upper Deck. While we do not yet know what exactly that will represent, we will be posting photos of all that we are sent on our Facebook page ASAP. Of course we will share how you can take some of them home.

While you’re at your friendly LCS I would urge you to check out some packs, boxes or their single card bins. While this promotion is free to collectors, each store had to purchase the packs you are getting. Sure, they might be well worth the investment, but please help ensure that each store can’t wait to be part of National Hockey Card Day in 2016.

Like Wayne said, it’s a credit to the NHL, the NHLPA and Upper Deck for putting together an incredible promotion that will be putting thousands of free packs into the hands of collectors. It’s not every day you can walk into a card store and get a free pack for just showing up, so get the puck over to the shop closest to you.

Mike Fruitman owns Mike’s Stadium Sportscards in Aurora, CO. Normally, his column focuses on what products are selling best in hobby shops. He’s got thousands of cards for sale on COMC.com under the ID cardmn5150. Enjoy new arrivals and big hits from Mike’s on Twitter. Mike’s is always looking for more friends on Facebook and you can email him at [email protected]